The Highest Calling, page 27
Kennedy and the other contenders have only a few hours to decide: Are we going to pursue this option? It’s a big decision, with big implications. And the Kennedys, Jack and Bobby, decide, “We’re going for it.”
Joe Kennedy, vacationing in the south of France, goes ballistic when he finds out, uses several curse words that I won’t repeat here, but essentially says “You guys are crazy. Stevenson is going to get hammered by Eisenhower. You, Jack, will be blamed for the loss, because you’re a Catholic. Don’t go anywhere near this thing.”
But Jack, showing his independence and with his brother’s encouragement, defies his father. They pursue this. And in a stunningly dramatic showdown, he comes within a whisker of being the Democratic nominee. It’s a good thing for him that he loses—it’s one of those points in his political life when Lady Luck smiles on him. And yet the episode makes him a national figure—and his strong showing will help him down the line.
DR: This pretty much takes us to the end of your first volume. Your second volume begins with the effort of John Kennedy to put himself in a situation where he could run for president in 1960. John Kennedy’s a young senator, not that powerful. Why would he think he could get elected president or get the nomination in 1960? Who were the other people who thought they should be president, and were they much more qualified, in their view, than Kennedy was?
FL: Several others did indeed believe they were more qualified than Kennedy. By some measures, he had no business thinking about this. But his calculation went like this: “At the Democratic National Convention in’56, I almost got the second slot. I could see then that I have a lot of support. I have a lot of support in New England, of course, but I can also do well elsewhere, even in the South. When I look at the competition, I don’t see anybody who’s better placed to win the nomination than I am, if I start early and I work harder.” And so he takes the plunge.
In 1957, long before any of the others are even thinking about it, he starts to travel around the country to get name recognition to win support. And little by little, he does.
Others who have a serious shot, hard as this is to believe, include Adlai Stevenson, even though he’s lost twice. There are many people in the party, especially intellectuals, who would like nothing more than for Stevenson to be the nominee one more time. This time he won’t have Eisenhower to face, which means this time he will win. He’s the one that the Kennedys worry about most.
Then there’s Lyndon Johnson, the powerful Senate majority leader, and Hubert Humphrey, the firebrand liberal from Minnesota, and Stuart Symington from Missouri. Some of these figures are more or less well-known to us today, but that quartet constituted the most formidable potential competitors for Kennedy.
DR: In 1960, were there a lot of primaries that you had to compete in?
FL: No. In fact, it’s a very different age from what had gone on before, when there were more primaries, and different from what we’re used to today. Fewer than a third of the states in 1960 had them.
One reason that 1960 is so interesting to me is that Jack Kennedy sees the primaries as his ticket to the nomination. He says repeatedly that as a Catholic and somebody who’s young and relatively inexperienced, the only way he can have any hope of winning the nomination is to contest—and win—several primaries. Kennedy knows that party leaders in 1960 still hold enormous power in choosing the nominee. So he tells his associates: “They’re never going to accept me if I don’t show that I can win primaries.”
So he enters the primaries, and Lyndon Johnson makes a disastrous strategic decision, which is not to contest them. He thinks he can rely on his power position in the Senate to get him a majority of delegates. Stevenson also is content to bide his time until the convention, as is Symington. So only Hubert Humphrey challenges Kennedy in these primaries. And the contests prove to be just as crucial as Kennedy anticipates.
DR: But Johnson was the majority leader, and had an enormous amount of power. He made the mistake of thinking that power in Washington was the same as power in the nominating process?
FL: Exactly. It was understandable in a way that Lyndon Johnson might think that having allies in Congress, both the Senate and the House, and in state party leaders would be sufficient. We can say today that he should have known better, but that’s because today they’ve become much more important—arguably too important. But that was less clear in 1960. Still, as Kennedy starts to win these primaries, Johnson begins to think, “Uh-oh. This could be a problem.”
DR: Kennedy wins the New Hampshire primary, which was then first. Then he has to enter the Wisconsin primary, which is a neighboring state of Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey’s home state. Is he supposed to win there as well?
FL: This was going to be a challenge for Kennedy. Because it’s next to Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey is known as the third senator from Wisconsin. This is his turf. But Kennedy takes him on—in part, by the way, because of a sophisticated use of polling. This is another area in which John F. Kennedy was a pioneer. He’s not the first to use polls, but he’s using them more systematically. He puts a serious professional, Louis Harris, on his payroll. So JFK gets sophisticated polling in place, including in Wisconsin, that indicates to him something dramatic: “I, John F. Kennedy, can actually win this thing. If I can defeat Hubert in Hubert’s own backyard, I’ll go a long way to getting this nomination.” It’s a crucial first battle.
DR: So what happens?
FL: It’s a victory for him, but of a type that he and his aides learned a lesson from, which is that they had set expectations too high. They had even made noises to some reporters that it was going to be a landslide. It’s no landslide, but a closely fought battle. And so some elements of the press interpret this as a kind of moral victory for Humphrey and a defeat for Kennedy. He wins, but not by the margin his team had anticipated.
DR: The next state is West Virginia, which is very Protestant; it has very few Catholics.
FL: About 97 percent Protestant.
DR: Kennedy wasn’t happy that he had to compete in West Virginia. How did he do?
FL: He wins that one too. Initially he’s optimistic, partly on the basis of Harris’s polling, then he reconsiders, saying to himself, “How can I enter this Protestant state and have any hope of winning? If I lose, it’ll give the party bosses all the reason they need to make sure that I don’t get the nomination.”
So he and his team go through a period of thinking it was a big mistake to come in. What they do, classic Kennedy-style, is they work incredibly hard for a month. They crisscross the state, flood it with volunteers. Ambassador Kennedy’s money is all over the state. They work 20-hour days.
JFK makes a key decision: he decides to tackle the religion issue head-on. He basically says, “When I served this country in World War II, nobody asked me if I was a Catholic or a Protestant. Nobody asked my brother, when he took his fatal final mission, what religion he followed.”
An idea takes hold: he begins to see that religion can help him, including in the general election, should he get that far, as much as it might hurt him. It’s an important moment.
DR: In those days, there were no campaign finance laws, so Joe Kennedy could put money in a suitcase and distribute it to people, and that was considered kosher.
FL: Quite literally in suitcases. There was a suitcase under the bed of an aide. At key moments, out would come the suitcase, and county and municipal leaders in West Virginia would be, in effect, paid, under a quasi-legal system calling slating.
Now, we should note that the Humphrey campaign also made payments. And interestingly enough, much of the money that Humphrey paid to people came from allies of Lyndon Johnson, because poor Hubert had no money.
DR: The night of the West Virginia primary, Kennedy was going to wait it out in Washington, D.C.?
FL: Yes, because he thought he might lose. He didn’t want to be in a place if he lost.
DR: He goes to a movie with his friend Ben Bradlee and their spouses. They couldn’t get in the movie that they wanted to see, so where did they go?
FL: They went across the street to a theater that showed soft-porn films. I was kind of hoping we wouldn’t go there.
DR: So they watch that movie, and then what happens in the election?
FL: Every 20 minutes or so, Jack Kennedy gets up from his seat and goes out to a pay phone and calls to see if there’s any news from West Virginia. He tries to reach Bobby; there’s no news. He goes back in, watches a little more of the movie.
DR: So they say, “You’re going to win”?
FL: They get home to Georgetown, and they get the incredible news: “Not only have you won, Jack, but you won handsomely.”
They pile in the plane, which they had christened the Caroline, for Jack and Jackie’s daughter. They fly down—it takes perhaps an hour—and then they have this 2 a.m. celebration in Charleston. There’s this almost idyllic scene, in which Hubert Humphrey at 2 in the morning comes out from his headquarters, his hotel, to congratulate Jack on his victory. He knows his shot at the nomination is basically over, but he makes this gallant gesture. Humphrey to me is an impressive public servant.
DR: Jack Kennedy goes on to Los Angeles, where the convention is held. It wasn’t 100 percent certain that he would get the nomination, but he pretty much has it locked up when he gets there. And people increasingly recognize that the big decision is “Who’s going to be vice president?” Who did John Kennedy want to have as vice president?
FL: This is a topic—as it always is for people who might be nominated—of increasing urgency. Some weeks earlier, Ted Sorensen produces a memo in which he lists various candidates, and one of the people that he lists in a prominent place on that sheet is Lyndon Johnson. Sorensen indicates that Johnson is his preferred choice.
What’s interesting about this is that JFK and LBJ have not gotten along well, to say the least, in the winter and spring, leading up to the convention. Johnson is making insinuations about Kennedy’s health, saying he’s got Addison’s disease, which the campaign denies. (Johnson is right.)
So, on some level, you think he’s never going to choose Johnson. And Robert Kennedy, who had already developed an intense dislike of LBJ, is arguing against selecting him. But Jack Kennedy in fact chooses Lyndon Johnson to be his nominee.
Later, it would be suggested that the Kennedy brothers felt certain that Johnson would never accept: that he’s got a much more powerful position in Washington, as the grand pooh-bah in the Senate, than he will ever have as vice president. But Johnson understands that no Southerner is going to be nominated by the Democratic Party in the 1960s. His only chance to get at the top prize is to put himself up for vice president. He also suspects that his power as majority leader will be diminished come 1961, regardless of whether Kennedy or Nixon wins the election.
I think some part of Jack Kennedy understands this, understands that Johnson may well say yes; he proceeds anyway. He chooses LBJ because the Texan helps him more than any of the other contenders. As his father tells him, in so many words, “You need help in the South. You need the Old South, you need Texas. Johnson gives you more of that than any other candidate.”
DR: Robert Kennedy goes to see Johnson a few times to ask him if he wants to withdraw.
FL: “Are you sure you want this?” That kind of thing, yes.
DR: And basically Johnson says, “Are you speaking for John Kennedy, or are you speaking for yourself?” Did John Kennedy want Robert Kennedy to say, “See if you can get Lyndon out of it”?
FL: That’s been much discussed by historians. It’s hard to pin down on the basis of the evidence. I do think the Kennedy brothers begin to have second thoughts about the nomination after core constituencies in the Democratic coalition raise hell—organized labor, liberals, Black leaders. By the time Bobby makes his approach to Johnson, where is Jack’s mind on this? I think he’s coming around to the idea that, “though I have reservations about Lyndon Johnson, he helps me more than anybody else. This could be a really close election, so I want him for this, even though my brother is begging me to say that we’re withdrawing this offer.”
DR: They emerge from the convention, and Johnson’s the vice presidential nominee. Richard Nixon is the Republican nominee. Ironically, his running mate is Henry Cabot Lodge.
There had never been presidential debates. Yet there were four presidential debates. Whose idea was that?
FL: In two previous presidential elections, there were not really debates, but in’52 and’56, both candidates would appear together in some format, and there would be some questioning of both. In’60, Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy had a debate in West Virginia. That was a little bit closer to what we would see in the fall. You have a sense that this could be coming. The networks are desperate for it to happen, seeing a ratings bonanza.
Nobody perceives that the four debates in 1960 will reach the kind of audience that they do. Americans by the tens of millions are tuning in from their living rooms. Although I don’t want to overstate their importance, ultimately the debates help John F. Kennedy eke out a very close victory. He shows Americans that he can go toe-to-toe with the sitting vice president and hold his own.
DR: The conventional wisdom is that John F. Kennedy looked better on television, and people who watched on television thought that he won the debates. And people who listened to radio thought that Nixon won the debates. What do you think?
FL: The evidence for the latter assertion is thin. It’s based on one rather small poll. Even that poll said people who listened on the radio thought both men did well. So it wasn’t even so much that they thought that Nixon had prevailed. We can go on YouTube and see this ourselves, that Kennedy looks better, looks fresher, projects better.
DR: He was tan. He was fresh. Nixon apparently said, “Are you going to wear makeup?” And Kennedy said, “No, I’m not going to wear makeup.” But Kennedy did have makeup on?
FL: Yes, he did. And Nixon was lathered in something called Lazy-Shave to hide his five o’clock shadow. There’s also this: in that first debate, time and again we hear Richard Nixon say, “I agree with the senator.” Even when invited to disagree, he’ll sometimes back down and say, “I agree with the senator.”
The unwillingness of Nixon to go after Kennedy in that debate had large ramifications. The first debate had the most viewers. Nixon does much better in the later debates. He probably wins the third one; maybe the second and fourth are a draw. But the damage had been done.
DR: The election goes forward. In the end, Kennedy wins narrowly in the Electoral College vote. The popular vote he won by 150,000 or so?
FL: Slightly over 100,000 votes, out of almost 69 million cast.
DR: Nixon is importuned by some to contest the election, to say, “Some of the votes were stolen, and maybe I should do something about it.” Why did he not contest the election?
FL: To a degree, he did contest it. In other words, he did not raise objections when officials in the Republican Party, including his own senior aides, raised doubts about Illinois and Texas in particular. He allowed that effort to go ahead. So this common view that he was the statesman, and somebody who did not under any circumstances wish to contest this, is not quite true, as I read the evidence.
As the days passed, I think he decided that any effort to have some kind of recount was going to take much too long. That American democracy, American national security, would suffer and that his own reputation would suffer. He also lacked confidence that it would really affect any outcome. So he decided, “I’ll live to fight another day.”
DR: Kennedy’s inaugurated, and he gives an inaugural address that many people would say is the finest inaugural address of the twentieth century. Maybe the only competition is Roosevelt’s first inaugural address. What is so special about it? President Kennedy famously said, “Victory has a hundred fathers, and defeat is an orphan.”
FL: It’s right up there, in my view. It’s one of the top four in our nation’s history—Jefferson’s first, Lincoln’s second, FDR’s first, and then Kennedy’s.
What’s remarkable about it is the brevity. It’s about 1,350 words. Not a word is wasted. It’s an inspired message, one on which the president-elect and his team spent a lot of time. He had become at this point a very inspirational speaker, and it shows. It’s ultimately also a kind of conciliatory message that he gives, less hawkish on the Cold War than is often claimed.
In terms of the drafting, it’s primarily Ted Sorensen. But there’s input from Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Walter Lippmann has some valuable input on a couple of sections. Kennedy himself does some revising, insists on changes to the address at key points. He’s very active in the production of this address. He says to Sorensen, in effect, “I want this address to really sing. This is my one opportunity to make a first impression with the American people and the world. And we’re going to do it.”
DR: Hugh Sidey, a Time magazine correspondent, was flying up to Washington, D.C., on the plane of President-elect Kennedy, and Kennedy calls him into his office and hands him a handwritten draft of a few pages, asking what he thought of the speech. Sidey then writes an article saying, “I know he wrote it because I saw it in his own handwriting.” What was that all about?
FL: I’m trying to get an answer to that question, because I know the anecdote. It’s been suggested that Kennedy wanted Sidey to think that this thing was from his own pen, and only from his own pen, and produced a handwritten version of a small portion that had been drafted by committee. It’s not implausible. But those who have suggested that Kennedy had little or nothing to do with the address, that’s not correct. Kennedy laid out what he wanted said, and then revised. He was actively involved, as he had been with his speeches since his initial run for Congress in’46.
